STAR TREK: The Original Series - Garth of Izar Read online

  “We were unarmed,” Spock said, “and it was not possible for Lieutenant Commander Scott, who was left in command of our ship, to beam us up, since he [12] could not penetrate the force field surrounding the asylum without risking the lives of everyone inside the facility. Captain Garth attempted to bend us to his will through threats, torture, and deception, and even tried to deceive me at one point by taking on the shape of Captain Kirk. His impersonation was most convincing.”

  “But fortunately not convincing enough,” Kirk cut in. “We were able to subdue Garth and restore control of the asylum to Dr. Cory, and when we left, Garth was already beginning to recover thanks to the serum we brought. He had no memory afterward of anything he’d done to us, and perhaps that was a mercy.”

  There was no need, Kirk thought, to go into all the details of the encounter, the unsuccessful attempts of the beautiful Orion inmate Marta to seduce him into giving her the password that would enable Garth to board the Enterprise, the tortures Garth had inflicted on his captives. Garth, perhaps enraged by Marta’s failure to get the information he wanted from Kirk, had finally had the poor woman dragged outside the asylum’s dome and left there, gasping for breath in the poisonous atmosphere, before killing her with a powerful explosive he had managed to develop during his imprisonment. That the cruel Marta was herself a serial murderer with several victims to her credit did not excuse Garth’s actions; she had been as insane and irrational as he.

  “A madman and shape-changer in control of a [13] starship,” Yeoman Wodehouse murmured. “It’s a good thing you and Mr. Spock were able to prevent that.”

  Kirk thought of the mystery of what had happened to Garth on Antos IV. Maybe Garth would finally be able to answer questions about Antos IV and explain why he had tried to destroy the people there who had saved his life.

  Was it something about the techniques of cellular metamorphosis taught to him by the Antosians, so necessary to mend Garth’s broken body, that had driven him insane? What had been the nature of his original mission to Antos IV? Coincidentally, the transporter accident had left him terribly broken but at the same time in the hands of the race most able to help him. Why then, upon his return to his ship, had Garth ordered the destruction of his benefactors’ planet?

  Donald Cory believed that the morphing abilities taught to Garth in order to save his life had unbalanced his mind in subtle ways. Others thought that Garth might have become extremely suspicious of the Antosians after he saw that they possessed the skill of cellular metamorphosis, because he viewed that talent as too great a temptation to the pursuit of power. Garth’s own behavior certainly demonstrated the power of that temptation; fortunately, his officers and crew had refused to obey him. As he descended into mental illness, his original fear of the Antosians went with him, blossoming into a lust for power and glory divorced from all sanity.

  Kirk had imagined it often, that scene on the [14] bridge of Garth’s starship. Garth would have drawn his phaser and dissolved his second-in-command, and then the second officer. The horror of the scene so impressed Kirk that he regarded it almost as a personal memory. He saw himself in the place of one of the officers on the bridge, watching a respected and legendary officer transformed into a madman and a murderer, and knew how much courage it must have taken for them to stand against their commander.

  “Lord Garth,” the man had called himself while tormenting Kirk in the asylum, insisting on the title, his mood fluctuating wildly between serenity, even gentleness, and violent mania. There had been little chance of the insane “Lord Garth” escaping from his prison, but he and Spock might well have died preventing it. The hero of Kirk’s cadet days might have killed him on Elba II, but he would not have escaped to command the Enterprise; there had been too many safeguards in place to defeat Garth’s mad ingenuity and genius, even if stopping him had cost more lives.

  Still, the nightmarish possibility, however slight, had existed—that of a starship taken over by a crew of criminally insane people and commanded by a rogue capable of taking the shape of anyone sent against him, of disguising himself as anyone who might further his dream of conquest. As was the case with his Cochrane deceleration maneuver, this might have been a ruse Garth could have used only once; like the invisible man of H. G. Wells’s classic tale, his power would have become useless once others found [15] out about it. But many might have died in the meantime.

  Kirk knew that he might have died at his hero’s hands, and yet his original admiration for Captain Garth had survived the troubling events on Elba II, and had only grown stronger with the possibility that the great commander might recover. Garth had been insane, unable to control himself, not responsible for his actions; Kirk had always tried to keep that in mind.

  He recalled those last moments on Elba II, when Garth, after his first session of therapy with the new serum and free of the memory of his violent aberrations, had looked at Kirk and asked, “Should I know you, sir?” How Kirk had wanted to say “yes” to the hero of his youth, and he had almost said so, for no reason other than that he had admired Garth, once hoping to emulate him, and might be able to help him. And earlier in their encounter, when a raging Garth had heard that his works were still studied at Starfleet Academy and had said, “As well they should be!” Kirk had heard in the man’s proud voice something of the heroic, logical mind whose spirit had been as strong as a sun.

  By now, the Garth who had killed his officers, who had threatened a world with destruction, who had tortured him and Spock and Cory and had killed the madwoman Marta, was no more. He had died somewhere in the labyrinthine complexities of a powerful, maddened personality.

  Chapter Two

  “CAPTAIN GARTH’S PETITION,” Kirk said, “seems straightforward enough to me.” He leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk. “He is requesting to be assigned to active starship command.” Kirk paused. “Is there a problem?”

  Admiral Mendez’s face on the small screen in Kirk’s quarters showed an instant of surprise, and Kirk knew what it meant. The admiral had not expected that response from him. He glanced across the desk at Dr. Leonard McCoy; the chief medical officer lifted a brow, then looked back down at the screen.

  José Mendez would have expected to have the physician be part of this discussion, and had quickly assented to McCoy’s presence, but Kirk wanted McCoy in the conference room with him for his own [17] reasons. McCoy had met Garth of Izar only after he was again under treatment and had been given his first dose of serum, just before Kirk and his officers had left Elba II. The doctor would be able to view Garth objectively, as a patient fully recovered from a serious illness; he had not known the madman.

  “Captain Garth has followed all Starfleet regulations on rehab certification,” Mendez said, “and there is no reason, other than discretion, to deny him a command.”

  “Discretion?” Kirk asked. “You mean ...”

  “You know exactly what I mean—endless bureaucratic delay, so that he would never see such a command. We could find plenty of reasons, all of them by the book. There are some in Starfleet Command who have floated the idea of dragging out the process of approval in the hope that Garth might give up after a while and decide to retire. I’m being frank with you, Jim.”

  “But he is qualified,” Kirk said. “In every outward sense. Exceptionally so.”

  “I’ve read all the medical and psychiatric reports you sent us, Admiral,” McCoy said, “and Captain Garth gives every sign of being both physically and mentally sound. I’ve also looked at all of the studies about the effects of that new serum on the patients in the Elba II asylum, and they’re even more remarkable than I expected. An Andorian and a Tellarite, both of whom were considered incurable for years, have been leading stable and normal lives on their [18] homeworlds ever since their release, and another former patient is now a professor of mathematics at one of Earth’s finest universities.”

  “That isn’t the same as being a star ship captain,” Mendel said. “Look, we do have human
suspicions and instincts to deal with, even in Starfleet. A starship command is a lot to risk ...”

  “On yesterday’s madman?” Kirk asked, almost as if he were speaking with Garth’s own voice.

  “We can’t see into his mind, Jim. There are those who will never trust him with so much power, despite the success of the new treatments and the low incidence of mental illness throughout the Federation. There are people who would remain suspicious even if he compels us, by the rules, to give him an assignment. Plus, there will always be personnel who won’t be eager to follow him for fear of what happened at Antos happening a second time.”

  “The man has a clean bill of health,” McCoy said, “and his Starfleet record, apart from the period of his mental illness, puts him right up there with the greatest commanders. If he pushes for an assignment, you’d have to give him one eventually, by your own rules and regulations.”

  “I know, Doctor,” Mendez said. “All our expert legal advisers say that we would have to violate our charter to deny him a return to active duty, and would then be ordered to assign him to a post.”

  “There’s always a desk assignment,” Kirk said, even though he could not imagine Garth contentedly [19] sitting in an obscure Starfleet office laboring at tedious administrative tasks. That, he thought, would also be an utter waste of the captain’s abilities.

  Admiral Mendez shook his head. “I don’t think so. You know how brilliant Garth is. He’d find some way to fight and win this battle just as he always has before, and I’d be on his side. Personally, I hope that he can return to us as one of our most valuable leaders, not as a desk jockey.”

  Kirk nodded; they were in agreement on that. Captain Garth, he was sure, could find a way to hold Starfleet and the Federation to their own regulations on standards of health and fitness, and the right to serve despite ancient superstitions about mental health.

  “And I also don’t want a prolonged series of hearings,” Mendez went on, “with Garth pleading his case and other officers looking for even more excuses to deny him a post. Whether he wins out in the end, or just gives up and settles for an honorable discharge, there’d be so much bad feeling afterwards that Starfleet morale would be seriously damaged.”

  “True,” Kirk said. “The only way he can prove himself without a doubt is to return to service.”

  “And the sooner, the better,” McCoy added. “Knowing that people are willing to give him a chance will be especially important to his mental health now.”

  “We agree, then.” Mendez was silent for a bit. “Good, because I’ll need you for this. Garth has a particular project in mind.”

  [20] “Oh?” Kirk sat back. “So it’s not a simple return to service on a starship.”

  “No,” Mendez said. “Garth is facing us with important unfinished business, with a proposal we can’t ignore. It’s important by any measure one cares to bring to it—and he’s the best man for the job.” The admiral smiled. “He’s like you, Jim, most insistent when he’s most right.”

  Kirk folded his arms. “And exactly what do you want of me?”

  Mendez hunched forward in his chair. “This is going to sound devious, and I’ll deny it officially if you ever bring it up, but what I want you to do is keep an eye on him and step in at the slightest sign of a problem.”

  “I thought he’d made a full recovery,” McCoy said.

  “By every measure we’ve applied, he has,” Mendez said, “but occasionally even a seemingly well-balanced officer can have a lapse in judgment.”

  Remembering his encounter with Captain Ronald Tracey and the Exeter on Omega IV—which began with Kirk finding the entire crew of the Exeter dead and ended with a crazed Tracey’s arrest—Kirk was forced to silently agree.

  Mendez continued, “We’re going to grant his request for a return to active duty and also approve his proposed mission. I’m convinced that he’s fit, and nothing will go wrong, but if he runs into trouble, I have to be able to say that I had it covered. I’ll need you to back me up, and you and Commander Spock [21] are the logical choice to be Garth’s watchdogs. After all, you were able to handle him on Elba II.”

  Kirk was silent for a few moments. “Sir, what do you really think?” he asked at last.

  “Exactly what I said. But we have to consider the possibility that Garth might appear to be unwell, or unbalanced and irrational, when in fact he’s perfectly sane. If his mission doesn’t go well, or fails completely, his actions could be misinterpreted, and the state of his mental health may have nothing to do with it. If enough officers on the general staff disagree with his judgment, a case could probably be made that Garth suffered a relapse.”

  “And that,” McCoy said, “could open the door to removing him from duty permanently and forcing him to resign. Maybe there are even enough medieval minds at headquarters to force him back to Elba II for another stretch, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Are there that many doubts about Captain Garth?” Kirk asked.

  “In certain circles, yes,” Mendez replied. “With so little mental illness during the last century, and so much success in treating it, we’ve grown too used to its absence. To have even the few cases we’ve had is like the return of an ancient infectious disease. Instability of the kind we saw in Garth—insanity on that scale—has shaken a lot of people in authority.”

  Kirk recalled a line from Hamlet, “Madness in great ones should not unwatched go,” and wondered how much invisible distress there might be in [22] ordinary people who never sought help, and therefore were counted as being well. Again, his thoughts returned to Tracey and the crazed look in his eyes when Kirk had confronted him on Omega IV.

  “Well, what is Garth’s proposed mission?” Kirk asked. “Why exactly is he the most suitable person to carry it out?”

  Mendez said, “I’m sure you already suspect what this mission involves.”

  Antos IV, Kirk thought, that had to be it. There had been almost no contact between the Antosians and the Federation since Garth’s sojourn on their world; that much he knew. In spite of the reputation of the Antosians for being benevolent and peaceful, prudence had dictated avoiding Antos IV until more was known about what its inhabitants might have done to inadvertently—or deliberately—provoke Garth’s instability.

  “I’ll be sending you the full description of Garth’s proposed mission after we’ve discussed it,” Mendez continued, “along with transcripts of his debriefings after his discharge from Elba II. After that, I know you’ll want to consult with Commander Spock.”

  “Of course. So what is Garth’s proposed mission?”

  “His mission, which even those who worry about his reliability think is essential now, is to learn whether or not the people of Antos IV might have any dangerous ambitions, given their shape-changing powers, and whether they are ever likely to have ambitions beyond their own world that might threaten us.”

  [23] Kirk had already guessed that this might have become a serious concern. If he had considered the possibility in the past, as he occasionally had, then so had other Starfleet officers and Federation officials. However peaceful the Antosians seemed, their encounters with other Federation races had been too few to give a complete picture.

  “We have no evidence that the Antosians harbor such ambitions,” he said, “at least not yet. Whether that will always be so is another matter.”

  Mendez nodded. “They claim to have always been a peaceful race, but at one of our meetings, Garth asked me whether we could afford not to keep a close watch on the Antosians for any signs of aggression or instability.” He grimaced. “I was about to say that we have the same problem with him, but he beat me to it.”

  Kirk chuckled. “That must have been a moment.”

  “Yes, and Garth savored it. I assured him that he could tell me anything he liked in complete confidence, but he didn’t seem all that upset. He just laughed and said that if I had all those doubts about him, then so would others, and he was prepared to face them. He emphasized th
at for others to trust him completely and without question, given his recent history, would be completely irrational.”

  “Sounds like a sane man to me,” McCoy muttered.

  “In any case, he has us pinned by our own regulations and ideals, and also by our concern for the Federation’s welfare and security. So, in short, here’s what we want you to do. You will deliver Garth to [24] Antos IV, on a diplomatic mission, and stand by to bring him home. He’ll have the official status of a diplomat and representative of the Federation, but that won’t fool him, since he already expects some supervision.”

  Kirk was puzzled. “But then you’re not giving him an actual command after all.”

  “We are, after a fashion.” Mendez looked distinctly uneasy. “He will be in full command of this mission. You will remain in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Enterprise, but for anything mission-specific, his is the final word. I hope you understand—given his seniority, his experience as a fleet captain, and his longer record of service, he does outrank you.”

  Kirk said nothing.

  “It’s only a technicality,” Mendez went on. “Naturally, if he shows signs of instability or of misusing his authority, you will step in.”

  “If that’s what the admiral orders,” Kirk said, trying to keep the unease out of his voice.

  “It is, I’m afraid. Look, Jim, I know you don’t like giving up even a piece of your command, but it’s necessary. To give him no more than the status of a diplomat wouldn’t be convincing enough for the Antosians, especially if his fears about them prove to be true.”

  “So you do have reason to be suspicious of the Antosians?”

  “I don’t know. Garth and the Antosians know one another, and that should be very helpful to such a mission. It makes him the perfect intermediary, and [25] I’ve spent enough time with him to feel that he has no hidden agenda in mind. But a number of officers in Starfleet Command suspect that the Antosians may deeply regret ever having given their powers to Garth.”